June 17, 2007

Background Scripture: Isaiah 1:10-20; 2 Kings 15:32-35.
Devotional Reading: Isaiah58:6-12

When I was serving a United Methodist congregation in Mohnton, Penn., the pastors of the various denominational churches of Governor Mifflin Township formed a loosely-organized ministerium that met one Monday a month. Much of the ministerial banter had to do with which pastor had the largest worship attendances the day before.

Looking back now, I realize that there was an unspoken assumption that the church with the largest attendance was the most successful congregation. But that is not necessarily true.
Yet, while every church carefully records the number of people attending, we almost never record in any way the quality of the experience. I personally have on occasion found worship with five other people more vital than preaching to a congregation of 500.

What God hates

In Amos, Hosea and Isaiah, God’s critique of Israel’s worship is shocking: “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? ... I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of he-goats … incense is an abomination to me … Your new moons and appointed feasts my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of hearing them … even though you make many prayers, I will not listen …” (Is. 1:11-15).

That’s enough to keep people out of church for the rest of their lives. But it is not worship that God hates, nor is it even the form of worship; it is a perfunctory worship that gives nothing and expects nothing. It is saying the words without living the life.

The key is in 1:13, “I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly.” The key word here is “and.” Solemn assemblies are not the problem, but it is the solemn assemblies and iniquity. If solemn assemblies do not lessen the iniquity of the worshipper, then that worship is an offense to God.

Early in my life – and perhaps from time to time thereafter – I tended to regard worship as something which I did to please God. It was a kind of good-natured sacrifice of my time and endurance that satisfied some type of divine need.

Sometimes, if the sermon was particularly sleep-inducing and/or the choir sang perfunctorily, I thought of it as an act of benign martyrdom. I assumed that I was worshipping for God’s sake.

Who needs it?

In actuality, I have come to realize that, although God may not need my worship, I am the one who needs it. And when He asks, “Who requires of you this trampling of my courts?” the real answer is that it is I who require it. I need worship because I need God.
Hugh Blair says, “It is for the sake of man, not of God, that worship and prayers are required; that man may be made better – that he may be confirmed in a proper sense of his dependent state, and acquire those pious and virtuous dispositions in which his highest improvement consists.”

“Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good” (1:16).

I need to worship because I need redemption from my sins that are “like scarlet.” Because of the mercy of God, in worship they can be made “white as snow.”

But my worship is meaningless and my forgiveness is invalid unless I can “learn to do good.” And of what does this “good” consist? “Seek justice, correct oppression; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow” (1:17).

All churches have worship services of some kind. But how many of us know why we “trample” God’s courts and go forth from worship to aid the victims of injustice, oppression and destitution?

This farm news was published in the June 13, 2007 issue of Farm World, serving Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee.